Bud Wiggins Jr., a stubborn sixty-one and stubborner fifteen pounds overweight, was in the perma-crawl of LA freeway traffic when he ready-steadied for a bit of the old Mounjaro ultraviolence. From base camp, he heard thunder on not too distant slopes.
Through the ages, men learned tricks to stanch ejaculation but when it came to tummy trouble, all strategies were a loser’s game. In a cold sweat, he scanned grassy onramps and adjacent knolls like a doomed pilot surveilling urban landing strips that would kill the least amount of civilians. Plan D was to leap from his truck in a single bound and uncork on the bramble like a honey bear — voyeurs’ cursory dashcam videos be damned.
Being high season for roadside encampments, it was understood he wouldn’t be greeted with the same courtesy extended, say, to a Mr. Rogers. Still another concern was that fine line between tragedy and comedy — it was one thing for a normie to be mauled by a pack of reanimated zombies, but quite another for a trespassing, aged-out Jewish novelist to be stabbed then set on fire as a consequence of cuspy Xer thinmaxxing. His crucifixion in social media’s public square had a shot at dwarfing the Coldplay jumbotron fiasco of a few years back. Worse, it might launch a thousand Substack dissertations that began with a smirk and ended in the heady acrobatics of weltschmerz.
Too late.
In a mudstream of consciousness, somewhere near the 101 South and 405 North interchange, the narrative unspooled in fits and starts before its denouement in the debris field of Bud’s signature jumpsuit. It should be noted that the romper was a more stylish version of his dad’s; the venerable satirist Bud Wiggins Senior was half-known (if at all) for sporting a proletarian boiler festooned with vintage gemmed brooches and pricey Hermes scarves. Wiggins fils liked his jumpers “neat” — no ice.
Forty minutes later, having biohazarded the Dickies into double leaf bags before tossing it in the dumpster, Bud emerged from a blistering shower naked and reborn. He ambled to the couch to peaceably scroll through the iPad, as was his wont after the unwanted snows of Kilimounjaro.
A friend sent him a video link to a New York Times interview with George Saunders. He’d never delved into the great writer’s celebrated short stories but had read his novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (five or six years ago, when Bud was still able to get to the end of a book). He was knocked out by how good it was, how moving, how gorgeous, which completely took him by surprise. A consequence of Bardo’s phenomenal popularity, bravura premise, and poetic beauty was that it won the Man Booker — thus, the canonized author was kicked upstairs by adoring critics and public alike. As if overnight, a one-time nichified SciFi-adjacent storyteller not only became a deserved giant of the craft but got branded as Saint Saunders, living relic and King of Kindness. MFA pilgrims crawled in a hajj to his altar (scattered with the gods of common and uncommon things), knee by bloodied knee with subscribers of The Times, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books. What a piece of work is man! thought Bud. This foul and pestilent congregation of vapors . . . yet it couldn’t have happened to a better man. Or humbler scribe, anyway.
The NYT interview was cringe. The “journalist” was so far up his subject’s ass that he took a left turn at the Bardo, raced past Nirvana, and spun off the Wheel of Samsara entirely.
He scrolled down to read the video’s intro.
He has also taught fiction to countless laypeople: His 2021 nonfiction work, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain,” was a book-length distillation of his teaching that, to the startled delight of his publisher, became a bestseller. In 2013, Saunders gave a convocation speech to Syracuse graduates in which he extolled the life-altering virtue of practicing kindness. That speech went viral and was repackaged as a book, which also became a bestseller, thrusting Saunders into a public role as something close to a guru of goodness.
Bud mused on the whole graduation-talk thing.
David Foster Wallace did one in 2005 at Kenyon College, later published as an homily about living a compassionate life. The now legendary rap to undergrads, which began with a parable about fish, spawned a seasonal cultural grunion run of true believers edging for empathy and its thousand-page novel spinoffs. In the aughts, the boyish, brainiac DFW was the go-to Astroglide for the dry Wheel of Dharma anxiety. Same as it ever was: the wacked-out end days of these troubled times — the gory, whoring Twenties — was rife with defeated Baby Boomers getting their house in order and mending the fence of messy breakups with Kindness. Bloodied by impotent, performative activism, they threw in the towel and began rehearsals for the death of their physical bodies, a finale closing in like a stuttering Uber Comfort avatar just a few blocks away on the neighborhood map. While doomsurfing, pornhubbing and ragescrolling, memes featuring the haloed boho royalty of Compassion and Empathy sprung up on their devices like empathogenic mushrooms: as Patti Smith, Rick Rubin and Nick Cave sermonized on grief, impermanence and mindfulness, the weepy acolytes got nauseous (in a good way) for the sacred. The thirty-second hits were perfect recruitment tools when viewed in the waiting rooms of shrinks and pain management specialists, or in the wake of cuckold hookups (after the well-paid black bull made his courteous departure). Chicly minimalist panaceas for any sleepless dark night of the senior soul.
It occurred to Bud that his putative manager might have ties to an agency with an “author booking” department. A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, a reviewer wrote that one of Junior’s novels “made a fine fictional companion to the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s writings on spiritual outrage and the impossibility of solace.” Didn’t that rate him a slot at some lib arts gown-out? He too had written on Buddhism, compassion, kindness — the whole woo-woo megillah — years before Saunders and DFW. Bud decided to corner Zuk the next time he was in LA. He’d huff and puff and blow the Convocation Cathedral door down, revivifying his career. He might even publish a book of his own collegiate gabfest, like his forebears1, and call it “In the Future, Everyone Will Be Kind For Fifteen Minutes.” He’d wow them with Gen Z slang and gunslinging parables, sharing raw personal intimacies while peppering his spiel with zingers from Chappelle and Chekhov before bringing it all home with mystic, showstopping heartbreak.
The little shits wouldn’t know what hit ’em.
Bud learned from experience that losing weight, along with a daily glass of pomegranate juice, lowered his cholesterol enough so that he felt justified in not taking statins. He’d heard a lot of horrible things about statins; Big Pharma was not your friend But more than weight loss, he longed for word loss; he was convinced that the plaque in his arteries wouldn’t kill him — it was words themselves.
In the end, whether running your mouth at a thousand commencement ceremonies2 or locked up in dementia’s Tower of Babble, the stained garment of language inexorably would drop, showing what it was made of: the Emperor’s new words. Yet they were all Bud had. Words were his muse, his lover, his eternal return, just as they were for his father. They birthed the six children of Bud’s novels and their sight and smell still mesmerized. But something had changed.
On a day now forgotten, words stopped quickening his blood.
Ten years ago, the gothic portmanteau “deadnaming” gave Bud an erection — now, he couldn’t give a shit about RSVPing to the newfangled orgies thrown by seductive arrivistes like bonesmashing and longhousing. Instead of rabbit-holing neologisms’ origins and meanings, he preferred to just make them up like a child sitting crisscross, lazily dreaming. He’d rather rot his brain with snuff reels — serotonin-jacking wait-for-it, watch-till-end CCTV medleys of baby-faced cops slaughtered at traffic stops or non-AI tigers gorily dragging safari tourists from open-air buses or crossing guard schoolkids launched airborne by drunk drivers like a spray of time-lapsed flowers blooming as they dissolved to Infinity.
As he drifted to sleep, Bud riffed on the Times piece.
“Saunders’ clothing, befouled by an errant skinny-jab, was bought by a consortium members Peter Thiel, Bono, and Noam Chomsky for an amount a university docent affirmed was ‘more than what was paid for the Kerouac scroll.’ The workaday outfit, freezer-stored to neutralize bacteria, is now on display at the college’s Shaffer Art Building. When told that the exhibit has become a kind of companion piece to Rothko’s Chapel, the dry-witted Saunders parried, ‘The Shroud of Turin it is not.’ To the startled delight of his publisher, the show has become a runaway bestseller . . .’”
In the morning, Bud valiantly tried another The Sound and the Fury break-in. He’d been picking the lock for ten weeks.
Faulkner was getting a lot of action from large and small presses because some of the author’s titles had recently entered the public domain. A Russian artist was publishing an illustrated version of Fury and asked Bud to write the introduction — an invitation he thought was likely due to the fact that in bygone days, a devoutly Catholic, alcoholic professor (and drinking companion of his father) boldly nominated Junior for a PEN/Faulkner Award, months before dying himself. A plenary indulgence, Bud joked at the time.
The novelist humblebragged to an old college chum about the offer, feigning that his mind wasn’t yet made up. The eccentric former roommate, comfortably adrift after retiring as a production manager at Scribner’s, said, “Well, why not? It’s kind of dignified . . . and keeps your name out there. God knows, we need our names out there!”
“So you think I should do it?” Bud said coyly.
Part of him shrunk at what he was about to hear; there was a reason he called his friend The Great Cynic.
“Well, it’s not exactly a money grab — not for you, and not for whoever has the idiocy to publish it. Safe to say no one’s going to make a killing. See, PD books — public domain — sadly don’t make great Christmas gifts. Which eliminates yet another revenue stream . . . but fuck all that, you might just get a new reader or two. Need I repeat, old friend? Novels as we know them are being carted to the charnel ground en masse. Literally! You have heard of Chatbot Claude, no? The devouring A.I. dakini? Her makers bought millions of books and fed them into the craw of that ravenous wood-chipping bitch — real Texas Chainsaw shite. Tore off the spines and dismembered the pages, chapter and verso, then burned the bodies while she belched, picking her teeth after the satanic binge . . . oh, come now, Bud, don’t look so pained! Libraries around the world are doing that anyway because they can’t afford to store the excess inventory. The Big Fives has warehouses and warehouses teeming with returns, costs them a bloody fortune. They’re running the largest morgues on the planet and you can’t keep those refrigerators on forever . . . Now, don’t be so sensitive, be a good boy and don’t take any of it too seriously! The whole world is burning — so we may as well have a little Fahrenheit Four-Five-Fun! Let them pay you to do the audiobook instead, ever done one of your own? Lord, you’ve got the voice for it — what’s the quote about Springsteen, ‘I saw the future of books and its name is Audible!’ We Boomers are all going blind . . . but Gen A.I. don’t even know what a book is. Nietzsche was right: ‘Book Is Dead!’” The Great Cynic sniggered at his dumb wit. “Brother, the game is o-vuh. ‘Something wicked this way comes . . .’” — he segued into an awful, zany English accent — “ . . .and what a right rough beast she is! Her name is Claude, by the way — l’Claude! L’chaim!”
The shrewdly prescient Saunders packed his audiobook with stars playing over 160 characters: David Sedaris, Miranda July, Lena Dunham, Ben Stiller, Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon — even Saunders himself got in on the act, the result being that Bardo won the 2018 “Audie.” Some PT Barnum over at Penguin Random House even submitted the monumental production to the Guinness Book of World Records for most individual voices on an eBook. Why not submit for most deli platters and throat lozenges? The logistically complex production was not only a flex of showmanship, but a massively generous act of Kindness to both cast and listeners.
Bud doffed his cap.
He sat in his special chair — the one sanctified as his magic Return to Reading Chair — and skimmed through The Sound and the Fury. It was like holding a manuscript written in a dead language; absolutely nothing held his attention.
To refocus, he watched a few snuffers, to no avail.
Never a voracious reader, Bud was more like a dunce with the gift of absorbing and synthesizing what he read by an act of osmosis.3 His difficulty in processing the written word, a kind of journeyman’s alexia, grew worse with age — far worse. Of late, with spotty career acclaim far enough in the rearview to appear as a mirage, a panicky conviction took hold: Bud’s excommunication (how apt the word) from the work of other writers had cratered the quality of his own books. He dimly remembered a time when the interplay of reading the classics and the occasional exceptional peer had been an accelerant to his own creative endeavors. Could it be that his novels — the last, released six years ago — were catastrophically maimed by the embargo?
A quote from Faulkner himself soothed Bud’s agita:
The writing of it [The Sound and the Fury] as it now stands taught me both how to write and how to read, and even more: It taught me what I had already read. Because on completing the novel, I discovered in a series of repercussions like summer thunder, the Flauberts and Conrads and Turgenevs — which as much as ten years before I had consumed whole, with all the understanding of a moth or a goat.
I have read nothing since; I have not had to.
Then wouldn’t a handful of the Dickens he read in his early thirties do? A smattering of Genet, Kipling, Kafka and Twain, old friends from his adolescence? Wouldn’t an arduous, years-long reading — to the finish line! — of Don Quixote count? Did it even matter that Nabokov and Martin Amis despised Quixote, as had Conrad, Lawrence, Turgenev, Hemingway, and Henry James?
On the other hand, Bud was plagued by Nabokov’s assertion that by definition a “good” reader — a “creative” reader — is a “rereader.” Another pundit wrote that one’s first read of a treasured novel is a youthful pleasure; the second, a coming of age; the third, a consolation in the despair of dotage. Yet what if one had unearthed only a slim shelf of treasures to begin with? For the handicapped booklover, to speak of rereadings was a mockery, an abomination.
He resolved at last to seek professional help.
He struck up a conversation with a Gen Z glamourpuss in Echo Park. Bud was at the club for a party hosted by a new literary magazine called The Big One. He occasionally got invited to those sort of things, usually by young bibliophiliacs — wisenheimer fans of his Dad who sleuthed their way to Bud’s books, as they had to Jan Kerouac’s and that other Junior, the son of William S. Burroughs.
When he introduced himself — he looked for a flash of recognition in her eyes but there wasn’t any — she gave her name, which he couldn’t hear above the din. Bud was in the middle of his shtick about his neurodiverse reading beef. He was feel-good drunk and making her laugh (sort of).“It’s a phobia,” he said.
“Well that’s awkward. For a writer, I mean.”
“The experts call it an ‘orthographic processing deficit.’”
“Easy for you to say. I wish I had that problem,” she said. “It’s crazy but my dad actually taught me how to speed-read when I was in middle school — he was an Evelyn Wood guy. I whipped through House of Leaves, Infinite Jest, and The Corrections in one week. And I pretty much retain fucking everything, which is a nightmare. I’m rereading Houellebecq now and he’s pretty great.”
Glossing over the progressive politics of the region (East Sunset Boulevard), Bud clapped back in a too-loud terrorist accent, “For me, all books haram now! Leaf House haram! Franzen, Houellebecq, DFW — haram!”
He watched the flirt flame out, its ash coiling cold and dead before his eyes.
The next morning, Bud had a weird hangover. His mouth tasted like it had sucked off a Tesla Bot and stayed like that, even after the throw-up. He couldn’t hold his words or his liquor anymore.
While he grunted along the old, borrowed, blue treadmill of a superannuated novelist’s life, A.I. found him a cognitive behavioral therapist for his troubles. In the prompt, he said to please avoid the Vyvanse/Adderall route — the magic meth bullets any respectable, quick-draw CBT practitioner kept in their ADHD arsenal. He’d been addicted to prescription speed before and once was enough, thanks much. Chat cheerfully informed that EEG-biofeedback was a helpful, non-invasive technique used not only on dyslexic kids but great for adults with the same issues Bud described in his intake assessment.
After another Chat incursion, he decided to lay off Mounjaro for a few days before his appointment.
Yes, diarrhea and other gastrointestinal (GI) issues can be triggered by, or occur as a side effect of, neurofeedback sessions. While neurofeedback is generally safe and often used to treat stress-related conditions, it can, in rare cases, trigger involuntary, transient physical responses.
Her office was modest. She wore high, stylish boots, and was youngish. The writer had his doubts but as the saying goes, the woman seemed to know her shit, and where to put it.
“From everything you’ve told me,” she smiled, “the act of reading has become . . . aggressive. And for that reason, it is not pleasurable. You’re no longer reading the words — you’re in mortal combat.”
After a bit more informal analysis, it was time for the brain mapping, a technique Chat had already familiarized him with.
She fitted him with a skullcap and attached electrodes. The twenty-minute exam was divided in two, half with eyes closed, half with eyes open. When Bud asked what he should be thinking about or visualizing, she said it didn’t matter. “Your brain will do the work.” A week later, it was back to the skullcap but this time she had him watch a reality show — a plastic surgeon was selling his house in Brentwood Circle. As Bud stared at the monitor, the images randomly faded in and out, the light growing dimmer then brighter again until stabilizing. The therapist said that the seemingly haphazard cycle was a call and response to whatever secret messages his gray matter was transmitting.
“The goal,” she said, “is to strengthen parts of the brain to reduce general anxiety and enhance reading skills. It’s like going to the gym. Pretty soon, those lobes of yours will have muscles.”
Between sessions, he dipped a toe back in the reading waters.
It wasn’t lost on Bud that the book he’d chosen to formally break his long reading fast — the book that chose him — was probably the most challenging in the American canon: The Sound and the Fury. As the therapist suggested, he laid down his weapons and went with the flow, and for some reason it worked. When he victoriously turned the final page of the Faulknerian mêlée of grammatical, gender, racial, and chronological confusion, the critic in him found no sound (other than dissonance) and no fury, other than that which befell the reader. The whole enterprise struck Bud as a self-congratulatory parody dressed up in the defunct academic conceit of “experimental,” when in truth, it was slapdash and sadistically obscure. Dull and abstractly corny, TSATF was a hackneyed fantasia with no discernible poetry in it; whatever inklings of beauty were of the even-a-broken-novel-is-right-twice-a-day variety. And so annoying! He kept stubbing his eyes on the clumsily rendered Ebonics of the blacks — “hit” for “it,” “tech” for “touch” — not because it offended his left-leaning philosophies but because it was crude, aesthetic amateur hour. The slobbering, bellowing retard Benjy was an all-night diner sign that vulgarly blinked the dog-eared outcome of incest. To Bud, everything about the thing was fake and asinine, and sinfully so, given that it masqueraded as High Art. All his years of worship . . .
What had he been thinking?
Trying to make sense of his misbegotten loyalties, reminiscing about that virginal roll in the hay with Fury, Bud was able to recapture his charmingly solemn teenaged vow: “I must write with his scope, his poetry (the name the gullible boy had affixed to Faulkner’s contorted semantics) — I must dare everything, or be damned.” The grown Bud made peace with the realization that if such was the only gift Faulkner had given him, he would be forever grateful.
The regaining of paradise was followed by another revelation: though his output had been relatively slight, Bud Wiggins Jr. realized he had done what he set out to do, and fulfilled the quixotic, heroically naïve promise he swore to decades ago. But the world remained clueless because no one had read his work. The ultimate irony was that the multitudes for whom his oeuvre was unknown included Bud himself. He had forgotten that he’d already written out his dream — in disappearing ink.
He mused over other imagined titans in his life.
What about Hemingway, what about Gertrude Stein?
What about Voltaire, what about Rabelais? And Sade and Celine and Genet and —
Like everything else, reading and writing was lunacy.
Books and the words that made them truly were haram.
He met his manager for lunch at the San Vicente Bungalows. Bud called him that, though there was nothing left to manage.
Occasionally (very), Zuk was able to cash in a favor to get him the script work that allowed Bud to have health insurance. The novelist used to hold a grudge about not being properly exploited. Now, with a mature, clear-eyed perspective of what the poor man had been up against all these years, he simply enjoyed Zuk’s company. The dynamo’s bullishly rose-colored spirit was contagious — for all Bud’s tempered bravado, Zuk knew that his client was on the ropes of a business that was punchy itself. But more than that, much more, Zuk wasn’t just simpatico, he was genuinely respectful.
When the hostess led him to the table, Zuk stood, reverentially holding out his arms. “There he is! The legend.”
They sat a while before the manager jumped up to table-schmooze with friends and clients: Michelle Yeoh, Sydney Sweeney, and DC3, who sat with Kendrick Lamar. On his return, they chitchatted and the server took their order.
Then, with usual anodyne aplomb, Zuk announced, “We’re moving to Paris!”
Bud winced. He felt a rumble in his intestines, not via Mounjaro, but rather the donkey kick of abandonment from the linchpin whose psychic and geographical presence had allowed the novelist to believe that things would be all right and luck was just around the corner.
“France is amazing. Europe is where everything’s happening — people would get you in France. Here’s the plan: I want to have a big dinner for you there and introduce you to everyone. They’ll fly you over! James Ellroy is huge in France. Isn’t he a buddy of yours?”
“We had a falling out. That’s how it goes with James.”
“Didn’t Ellroy write the foreword to one of your books?”
“For a French edition — ”
“That’s perfect.”
“That was twenty years ago, Zuk. I’m sure it’s out of print.”
“It’s a great calling card! And don’t be silly, I’m sure people know who you are — you’re a legend! But the Ellroy book — with his introduction — is an amazing reminder. It must have sold really well . . .”
“I doubt it,” Bud snickered.
“Really? What makes you think?”
“Well, for one thing, because people don’t read — and when I say ‘people,’ I include myself! The ones who do are rare as pink sheep. That everyone ‘reads’ is kind of like the Big Lie.”
The manager guffawed. “Legend! My wife Lisbeth’s a huge reader . . . but do you really think that? Do you really think it’s true?”
The question, almost plaintive, was asked with stagecraft earnestness. Zuk had a way of presenting himself as a naif, belying a deep knowledge and ferocious instincts about the inner workings of all entertainments — a guileless stratagem that put interlocutors at ease while gaining Zuk access to valuable intel. He wasn’t doing that with Bud though. With his old friend and art outlaw, he really did think he could learn “new things.”
“People do listen to audiobooks,” Bud said grudgingly.
“I love audiobooks!” Like a consul general with marching orders, Zuk said, “I’m flying back tomorrow. I’ll track down the Ellroy book and we’ll get you to Paris. I’ll introduce you to the mavens — these amazing Millennials ruling the culture there now.” Bud knew it was theater but none of that mattered; he really did love the man. “And it’s a huge plus that you’ve written a few screenplays . . .”
“That was twenty years ago too.”
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t be Debbie Downer! Because some of the people you’re going to meet have things they want to adapt.” Squinting at Bud, he said, “You look really good, by the way. Have you lost weight?”
“Doin’ it old school — countin’ calories.”
Zuk shook his head in admiration.
“That’s legend,” he said.
A few days later, Bud got a text from his manager about “a stack of the Ellroy books” being delivered to his door in Paris.
His assistant emailed, “While he’s away, Zuk said please use the pool. If the realtor stops by to show the house, you can totally keep swimming! Zuk’s team said no problem.”
She sent him the gate codes.
On the way up, he ruminated on the chillingly casual “to show the house” — ugh. He stopped for gas at the fancy 76 in Beverly Hills. Someone on the other side of the pump was filling up a McClaren and talking on his cell. Bud heard him say, “I’d eat a mile of that girl’s shit just to see where it come from.” He wondered if the wiry young thug who was gassing up listened to audiobooks. The gal he was talking to his friend about probably did.
In Bud’s duffel were swim trunks, a towel, a book of Chekhov stories, and some expensive swag bag headphones from a party China Chow invited him to in the 90s; they still worked. Lolling on the chaise, he listened to a Spotify playlist of Sibelius (Zadie Smith loved Sibelius) and daydreamed. It was easy to imagine this was his house, his pool — that he, Bud Wiggins Jr., was the new owner of 1624 Blue Jay Way. Easier still to imagine no one had ever lived there but him.
Then a strange thing happened.
The luxe mise-en-scène — pool, terrace, foliage and skyline beyond — intermittently faded out then dialed back up like the images during his brain mapping. Was something wrong with his eyes? Bud didn’t think so . . . the cataract surgery in 2024 went well. He did have a couple of incidents after the procedure, mostly while driving, when the world began to subtly pixilate, not in a dramatic way but enough to cause some concern. The first time that happened, he pulled over to call the doctor’s office. The RN said it was an “ocular migraine” and if it lasted more than 45 minutes to “come see us right away.”
This felt like something else. He rolled around his tongue and tasted burnt marshmallows. Even weirder, when he took off the headphones, the music persisted — fading out, fading in — with Sibelius nudged out by a church organ hodgepodge of his beloved Beach Boys. As if suddenly having unencrypted access to all the celestial things Brian Wilson composed in his head but never set down.
Then, it was over.
He dipped in the pool to wash it all away. Toweling off, Bud loitered at the glass door of the house and peered in. He slid it open. Grabbing a Diet Dr. Pepper from the fridge, he sauntered through the house to the cozy library office. He idly surveyed the shelves: Malcolm Gladwell, Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within — and to his surprise, a paperback Lincoln in the Bardo, which reminded him of the Chekhov in the duffle. He picked it up at a secondhand store in North Hollywood because of a story called “Gooseberries” that Saunders went on and on about in the NYT interview. (Bud liked it well enough, but it didn’t give him gooseflesh.) It was so smart of Saunders — so kind — to recommend a lesser known work by his hero. Who wanted to be told for the thousandth time to read “The Kiss,” “Ward No. 6” or “The Lady with the Little Dog”?
He pondered how many Chekhov volumes were sold as a result of Saunders’ flogging . . .
Standing there, mindlessly thumbing Bardo’s pages, he got an idea that almost made him spit-take. He could pole-vault from the remainder bins by writing a slim novel called CHEKHOV: Collected Stories by Bud Wiggins Jr. — his name in a smaller font and far enough below to appear that he was the editor. He wouldn’t even have to ask a lawyer if that was legally something he could do because the Master had been dead more than a century.
He took a few steps and sat behind Zuk’s desk. He couldn’t picture his manager spending any time there — that just wasn’t Zuk’s thing. Bud thought the PC was a prop, part of the realtor’s home staging, but when he touched the keyboard it lit up. No password required.
Hi, Zuk.
What would you like to do?
Below the greeting were five little boxes in a row. The first said Book Search; the second, Market Overview; the third, Bestsellers; the fourth, Collections; the last, Report Builder.
The frisson of a phantom Santa Ana gusted the hairs on his neck as the flabbergasted novelist apprehended where he’d landed . . .
BookScan!
To certain ears (Gen X being the last of the herd), “BookScan” conjured the Ark of the Covenant, the golden chalice, the Masons, the Illuminati. For in its darkly alchemical hidden recesses, the secret society contained the infernal mechanism that tallied and sorted the number of books each author had sold — Camelot to publishers but Mordor to living writers. To inquisitive scribes, the tote board may as well have been graced by the signage of a familiar motto: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Why would Zuk subscribe to such a thing?
Then of course it made sense: the Business relentlessly sniffed for IP truffles that might sprout into streaming second-screen juggernauts. On the brink of misdemeanor espionage, Bud paused like a beggar at the gates of an impregnable palace.
He had a bad feeling . . .
And why would Zuk have left behind his computer anyway? He’d probably never used it; he must have had a dozen of them and this one resided in the library, that’s all, like a piano in a living room. Yet what if the realtor burst in and caught him in flagrante delicto? Just when Bud realized he was being a drama queen, he got another jolt — for all he knew, his manager had just been awakened in Paris by a cellphone alert: “Hi, Zuk. Welcome back!”
Throwing caution to the wind, he boomeranged back to . . .
BookScan!
He was on a whistleblower mission now. Somehow, he had been chosen to expose the Mother of all Lies — that people read, that books sold — and would use the scan’s algorithmic numbers and sacrilegious Deuteronomy to topple the whole house of marked-deck cards. In one fell gonzo journalistic scoop, Bud would reveal that the anointed of American and World lit, from effete famousoids to the newbie wunderkind fetishized ad nauseum in fawning profiles and divinizing reviews — that the golden bookfest calves of Frankfurt, Edinburgh and Jaipur, shot in elegant monochrome with their mouths japing in whip-smart, cool kid hysterics while clutching ribboned medallions in Air Mail, The Washington Post, and Vanity Fair — that all the consecrated Margot Channings, the not long for this world vampyric attention-whore Addison DeWitts who’d won everything but the Nobel, the NYRB clit-bait Eve Harringtons who wrote their way to the top . . . had sold no books at all. (Or nothing to write home about.) He felt like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show — Bud actually didn’t much remember the movie but the nonstop essays on Reddit, spangled with production stills, kept his familiarity of it sharp — once he stepped outside the studio set to pry open mouths, the real book sale numbers would show themselves like rotting crack whore teeth. Ripping off the mask, Bud Wiggins Jr. would live up to Zuk’s epithet and truly become legend, with the side benefit of sparking a major reappraisal of his work. Make room, Snowden and Assange — when Junior was done, no fish or penguin would be safe . . .
He clicked the cursor on the search bar and typed in George Saunders.
Bud expected a highish figure, something close to 20- or 25,000 copies sold; he had won the Booker. A number appeared: 237,495, hardcover. The paperback sold 228,882.
Too high, to say the least — must be some mistake.
Refreshing the page, the figure actually rose.
He squinted in confusion at the numbers, then allowed himself to at least entertain the possibility of their accuracy. Might it have something to do with the star-studded audiobook?
In a tizzy, he did a search for the first few authors who came to mind.
A friend had recently suggested a new novel-in-stories called Rejection by “an incredible genius” with the odd name of Tony Tulathimutte. It had blurbs from Dwight Garner, WSJ and NPR, and even Jonathan Franzen, who praised the author’s first book. Bud never heard of T2; it was definitely a name he would have remembered. BookScan had Rejection at 25,124 — all hardcovers! Dizzied, he moved to someone he had heard of: Emma Cline, an ingénue he’d actually met who claimed to be a fan of his first book, written before she was born. (Fan or not, it didn’t matter, because she’d graciously made the effort to acknowledge him.) Cline’s debut novel, The Girls, sold 178,679 hardback and another 146,303 in soft. Her latest, The Guest, was a tidy hundred thousand and rising . . .
He sat back in Zuk’s chair and did a breathing meditation he learned on IG..
After searching more desultory samplings, the veil slowly lifted to reveal the obvious:
Bud had been pranked.
Rolling back the Herman Miller, he marveled at the artifice. Well-played! The conspiracy was magnificent. Like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, Bud tore off his mask, only to reveal that it was the redundant face of his own that lay beneath. All that he’d been told, all that he’d heard, all that he thought he knew — that no one was reading, that publishing was dead . . . that was the lie. The star of The Truman-Wiggins Show had been redpilled into a world that was bluer than the skies of Heaven.
But who had been telling him this? And why?
As a reset, he walked to the shelves and fingered a few volumes, then raced back to punch in Malcolm Gladwell and Tony Robbins.
Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference sold 2,626,909 hardback; Robbins’ Awaken the Giant rang up just 572,932.
When he entered David Foster Wallace’s hardcover transcript of his commencement talk at Kenyon College, the graph dipped encouragingly, plummeting to 182,857. (Hanging himself the year before its release would have helped sales — but still.) Saunders’ stand-up act at Syracuse, “Some Thoughts on Kindness,” logged in at only 78,675. Loser! he muttered. Get thee to a backyard lawn chair and bathrobe noose, good, kind Professor . . . The drop from seven figures to five gave Bud a second wind.
He could understand the Gladwell’s and the Robbins’, the Stephen Kings and JK Rowlings too. He even understood the giant-killer flash mob takeover of Romantasy . . .
Rising from the inky depths of memory like a fortune in the Magic 8 Ball that was one of his father’s prized childhood possessions, came a name: Mark Danielewski. Danielewski wrote a cult novel called House of Leaves (one of the books that the girl Bud met in Echo Park had speed-read) in the year that BookScan was born. Rife with multi-font styles, blank pages, and upside-down typographical anarchy, the author trumpeted his design for a cycle of 27 books, each 800 pages long. Bud recalled reading interviews with Danielewski back in the day; his messianic ambition belonged not to a littérateur but rather to Olympian-visioned earth artists like Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson — or Donald Judd, who, God of ADHD that he was, lined up 100 perfectly spaced identical aluminum boxes in hangar-sized sheds in Marfa, Texas, of all places.
Bud entered the title, rubbing his hands together like the gleeful Hardback of Notre Dame — he couldn’t wait to hear the pitiful ring of this bell. When the clangorous number chimed, he gasped and covered his ears.
House of Leaves had sold 1,105,798 copies.
The second visit to the hillside house was sans the flush of Bud’s premiere and more like returning to the scene of a hazing, or a dog to its own vomit. Armed with a scribbled notepad resembling a deranged hit list, Bud numbly fed author and titles into the search engine with the flattened affect of an accountant who was late for dinner — one who, after humming while washing the dishes, calmly slaughtered his wife and kids then took his own life.
Zadie Smith (600,000 hardbacks between On Beauty and White Teeth) . . . Ottessa Moshfegh (416,281 for My Year of Rest and Relaxation, with the rest of her books relaxing in the high fives) . . . David Szalay’s Flesh (43,036)4 . . . Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School (50,233) . . . Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (319,930) —
It was time to set a lower bar.
On a whim, he spied on Dennis Cooper, whose best in show was 21,614 (The Sluts). But the rest were in the 2-, 3-, and 4,000 range. Heartened by the paucity of sales, Bud murmured, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” He coasted through a few more — Houellebecq’s hardcover numbers were meh but his trade editions were in the twenty- and thirty-thousands (the savage detective kicked himself for not having left on the high-note of low Coopers). In a kind of seizure, Bud fed the furnace until the kindling was gone and his mind was charred and dormant.
Inevitably, he dredged the name of a river corpse, freeing it from the killer’s deadly ballast:
Bud Wiggins Jr.
When he typed in the name, only the titles of his father’s books appeared.
The novels of Bud Wiggins Senior predated BookScan, though the sales of Dad’s motley reprints — the fits and starts of comebacks that never came — ranged from eighteen- to thirty-five hundred. Seeing his patriarch laid out like that was almost like visiting his grave. There was something honest and straightforward about it that moved him.
Scrolling down, he accidentally lit upon the orphan, crying in its crib in the haunted nursery at the bottom page: the numbers affixed to Wiggins the Lesser.
Bud’s last novel was published in 2020, the year the pandemic began and Lincoln in the Bardo won the Audie. A few inches to the right of the title, beside the RTD (Release To Date Sales), was “78.”
Next to that was the WTD sales (Week to Date) — 0.
Next to that was the YTD sales (Year To Date) — 0.
The old phrase “goose eggs” echoed in his head (with a cackle, Bud revised it to “Gooseberries”). He sat there, forlornly shaking his head. It could not be 78 . . . the software must have glitched, amputating the number. True, the timing of Book Number Six couldn’t have been worse, with Covid and all; also true it was completely ignored by the press, excepting a pair of benign, salutary thumbnail reviews in the trade magazines. As good fortune happened, a few Booklist and PW staffers were aging fans of Bud Jr.’s early work.
The novel he wrote before “78” scanned at an RTD of “363,” and the one before that, a cumulative “691.” Even though it was a downward trend, if a trend at all, there was solace in seeing his name and titles — even the obscene numbers — writ small. Somehow that mattered. Despite everything, Bud Wiggins Jr., in threadbare, freshly laundered waitstaff clothing, had cordially been invited to attend the dollhouse gala. With head held high, he watched the graceful dancers glide by in dinner jackets and evening gowns, their jewels sparkling, and laughter like wine. None of them looked his way — but attention had been paid.
As a parting shot, he pivoted to the $17 Random House trade paperback of The Sound and the Fury: The Complete, Definitive edition. Year to Date: 380,391. He brooded about oversaturation and wondered if the Faulkner he was writing the preface for would sell.
When Bud returned to the house a few days later, the computer was gone.
He went to lunch with the retired old Scribner’s salt who regaled him about the book-eating demon. With self-effacing charm and high humor, Bud recounted his Excellent Misadventures in BookScanland — before playfully chastising the Great Cynic for bullshitting him about the death of belles-lettres.
“A report,” said Bud, “that seems to have been greatly exaggerated.”
“Friend,” said the salt, “we hear what we want to hear — that’s me, that’s you, that’s Lydia fucking Davis and Pico Iyer too. And yes, guilty as charged — maybe — but with an explanation: I just don’t see those ludicrous numbers — number our days! — the way you do, friendly friend. How could I? Let me tell you what this veteran knows — and as you’re well aware, I had boots on the ground for thirty-odd years — books on the ground — and ‘odd’ years they were . . . I hate to use that deckchairs-on-the-Titanic cliché but that’s what it fucking is. He who dies with the most deckchairs wins? I don’t think so, Mr. Wiggins . . . scratch Titanic, it’s deck chairs in a leper colony — there’s a phrase you don’t hear anymore. Our dear mother used to threaten to drop us off at one if we didn’t behave . . . Now, you listen to me, ya big, underappreciated, oversensitive genius: all these chart-topping punks and poseurs — not you, Wiggins, you’re the real deal — they’re just sad fucking lepers. ‘Kiss me quick! There goes my upper lip! There goes my fingernail into your ginger ale!’ But here’s what will save you: when ye come to realize that in the end, ye friendly friend, lepers we are all. Orwell said it best, didn’t he? The man said everything best, everything that counts anyway. ‘All lepers are equal, but some lepers are more equal than others.’ Point being, shill ten copies or ten million and the result shall be the same: that incinerating whore with steel teats Claude is going to have her way with us — ‘Oops there goes another rubber tree plant!’ — everyone’s goin’ to the fucking mind hive, tout suite. And how suite it is!” He jigged in his chair and sang, ‘We’re off to see the mind hive, the wonderful mind hive of Oz . . .’”
When they said their goodbyes on the street, the cynical wizard sneered, “BookScan!” before disappearing behind the curtain.
Bud made a pitstop to properly digest his smashburger.
Stories was a wonderfully curated bookseller, a place where one could still make magical discoveries, just as he did in his boyhood — a real cabinet of wonders. Eyeballing the usual suspects, RTDs rose from their covers like steam: this one, 563,912 . . . that one, 4,396,448 . . . like walking into a concentration camp (they tattooed Bud with “78”) surrounded by Sonderkommandos overseeing the Selection. Numbers under 10,000 signified the old, the disabled, and mothers with children.
They went straight to the gas.
He sat in a nook, tearing little hunks from his chocolate croissant. The taste of burnt marshmallows returned, this time with an acridness the sugary pastry couldn’t dilute. Jolted by a screech of electronica, Bud violently swatted his ear like a bear in an old cartoon. He scanned his neighbors, looking for a culprit without earbuds — How rude! — before realizing the noise was coming from inside his head. He tried to identify the importunate melodies as they performed their vertiginous murmurations before retreating to quieter hills. Yet their artifacts remained, a purgatorial undertow of alien Muzak.
He was spooked.
To distract himself, he glanced at a studious, nose-ringed girl at the nook’s sole other table. Her laptop had a pile of books beside it — Martyr!, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, and Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds.5 He finally looked at her face.
“Hey!”
“Hey.”
“Bud Wiggins Jr. — we met at a party. For The Big One.”
“Oh my God, hi.” He was relieved that his drunken haram faux pas appeared to be water under the bridge. “I googled you and ordered one of your books! They’re kinda hard to find.”
“And harder to read, say the critics.”
“Ha! Why don’t you have a Wikipedia page? Your dad does. Everyone does but me. You need to get someone on that.”
“Right away!” he saluted.
“Your father was actually pretty wild. I think I read one of his books when I was at Emerson.”
“That memorable, huh.”
“I was doing a lot of drugs. What’s with the ‘Junior’ thing? Is it weird to be a junior?”
“We’re a pretty big group, you know. We have a convention every year. We call it the Junior Prom.”
She threw back her head and overlaughed at the dopey joke. The throat sounds were musky and carnal and he wanted to grab her up and carry her off like a loaded gun. But to where? It was a year since he’d slept with a woman — through Zuk’s urging, he went on a dating app but deleted it an hour later. He didn’t feel like a sexual being anymore; he didn’t even feel like a being.
“The Junior thing was a goof of my Dad’s. Jews aren’t supposed to give their sons the suffix — it’s haram.”
He winced at the self-sabotage.
“So, you’re a Jew,” she said, blanching the comedy stylings of his callback with a lukewarm smile before deciding to let it go — she’d lobby against Israel another day. Because how many times had she met a real live published novelist?
“A Jew, not a Zionist,” he said. “How ’bout I take the Fifth? On the whole topic.”
With a smile, she said, “Leave the gun, take the Fifth.”
“Oh, that’s awfully good,” he said, cackling as he tore at the croissant. . “But how would you know about that movie? Aren’t you fourteen?”
“Twelve.” A crumb flew from his mouth when he laughed. “Actually, I’m twenty-two. And — Pop-pop — there’s a crazy new thing called ‘streaming.’ Only a few people have heard of it but it’s going to be really big. With ‘streaming,’ you can actually watch all kinds of moving pictures on your handheld device of choice. Even ones from the Seventies — ”
“Don’t break my balls.”
“ — and there’s these wild, off-the-beaten-track places that show old movies . . .”
“Pop-pop thanks you for the tutorial.”
“Tarantino owns one — the New Beverly.”
“I’m sorry to ask your name again.”
“Can I take the Fifth?” she asked.
“Why not? It’s much better the next day, especially with cannoli. Really though, what’s your name? Give me a fake one.”
“It’s Caddy.”
“Is that fake or real?”
With ironic formality, she thrust out an arm. “Caddy Wool — pleasure to meet you, Bud Wiggins Junior.”
Enchanted, he shook her hand. “The pleasure is all yours.” Her bicep was sinewy, toned from book lifting. “And by the way, I like ‘Caddy.’ That’s the name of the girl in The Sound and the Fury.”
“Exactly,” she said, with nuanced appreciation. “My father loved that book. He named me after her but Mom wasn’t having it, not even a little. She finally caved, as long as ‘Cadence’ was the name on the birth certificate. But only Pop-pop calls me Cadence. And Mom, when she’s mad.”
“Cadence is really beautiful and perfect,” he mused.
The delicacy of the simple sentence gave her a nod to an underlying, disciplined intelligence. “Ya think? I love it too.”
“Claude is a lovely name. The question is . . . How many books do you reckon you’ve murdered with those steel teats?”
He smiled blankly, waiting for a response.
She wondered if he was quoting something . . . Was she missing a literary allusion? Glossing over the remark, she said, “The Faulkner ‘Caddy’ was actually short for Candace — yikes. I really can’t stand that name. I’m pretty sure Candaces were the Karens of their time.”
“Can’t dance,” he said.
“Affirmative. Candaces can’t dance for shit.”
“Benjy tech hit. Benjy tech the fence then run along to watch the hitters.” She grinned, nonplussed. “Dilsey mouth smell.”
She struggled to decode. “Dilsey — wasn’t that the maid? From The Sound and the Fury?”
“Da sapphire dark-rush da magnolia — be droppin dem verboten gooseberries from da tree of uncommon prayer all da lib long day.” His voice went ludicrously basso-blackface. “Gooseberries be preparations for tenderness. Chekhov pickem from the groan, pickem all da lib long.” He swatted his ear again with renewed force and his elbow sent the latte crashing to the floor. The room turned to look while Bud’s voice boomed, “Caddy taste da marshmallow gawd roilin in de roofmouf o’ Dilseyland starwhirl.”
He stood, as if hoisted to attention by the Unknown.
The table and the world overturned into blackness.
The day was a metal machine blur of being lifted, this time by the strong hairy arms of the Known.
Bud awakened in a hospital bed. Out the window, palms demurely blew, the first guests at a wild party. Bud wondered about his phone then noticed it was conveniently in his hand. By habit, he pressed the YouTube shortcut — at the top of his search history was dua lipa george saunders interview. He was ten minutes into watching when his manager appeared in the door.
“Hi Zuk,” said Bud, with angelic passivity.
“How goes the legend?” asked Zuk, sweetly diffident.
“Supposedly I had some kind of stroke.”
Zuk gently nodded. “I know. And thank God they brought you here right away. They’re so great with strokes now — but it’s all about how fast they get to you. Have you seen someone? I mean of course you have but did any of the doctors say more about what happened?”
“Not yet.”
He wondered if Bud simply didn’t remember. “Isn’t it great that we got you some work last year?” With mild trepidation, Zuk added, “The WGA’s covering this, aren’t they?”
“A woman stopped by from the whatever department — said my Blue Cross kicked in three days ago. Our Lady of Vanna White was more thrilled about the news than I was.”
“That’s amazing.” Zuk was genuinely relieved.
“If this happened on Tuesday, she said I’d have been severely fucked. In so many words. How did you know I was here?”
“From the woman who was with you.”
“Oh?” he shrugged. “My memory’s a bit . . . whatever. It’s like someone took an eraser and . . .” He pantomimed using one on his head. “But this eraser was made of fucking steel wool.”
“It’s actually kind of amazing,” said Zuk. “I got a frantic call on my cell from a really smart young gal — does she work at the bookstore? She said that she scrolled through your phone . . . am I listed in your emergency contacts as ‘Dad’?” Bud smiled wryly. “That’s legend! Thank God you don’t have a password — what kind of maniac doesn’t have a cellphone password?”
“Prometheus Unlocked.”
The reference went over Zuk’s head. “Anyway, she’s the one who said they were taking you to Hollywood Pres.”
“You came all the way from Paris to see me?”
“No, but I would have. There was an emergency, a business emergency, so I had to be back. But the timing’s perfect because now I’m here to help!”
“Did you sell the house?” Bud was trying to get his bearings. “Is that why you’re — ”
“No no no. Lisbeth wants to keep it. It’s not about Paris, she loves Paris — our son’s at St. Andrews and it’s great to be so close. Dublin’s amazing. But we both have such strong ties to LA, plus my folks are in Palm Springs. You know my mom’s French, don’t you? So we’re going to lease Blue Jay out for a few years.”
“What was the emergency?”
“Just silliness. Starz is doing a miniseries of All Fours — the novel by Miranda July.6 Miranda’s a client, you’d love her. I’ll get the two of you together. We had a little bump along the production road but everything’s perfect now.”
“I heard great things about All Fours,” said Bud magnanimously. “A big bestseller, no?”
“Not at all. No one is buying books — they’re relics, like the movies. Writers are happy to sell 500 copies . . . bought by friends and family!”
Another man stood in the doorway now with a pale-faced intern by his side. He interrupted without the usual fanfare of apologies for interrupting.
“Mr. Wiggins, I presume?” He was charismatic, jocular, and immensely self-assured. “I’m Dr. Khudsiani but everyone calls me Dr. K. I’m your neurosurgeon. Forget me not!”
Bud cheerfully gestured to his friend. “This is Zuk Taittinger, my manager.” He thought the nod to a “team” might get him VIP status.
Ever the diplomat, Zuk asked the doc if he should step outside.
“Please stay,” Bud implored.
“Yes, do,” said Dr. K. “That’s fine. Mr. Wiggins” — he enjoyed saying the name — “do you have family?”
“None to speak of. Or speak well of.”
“Ha!” Turning to Zuk, the doctor said, “The man is witty.”
“He’s legend.”
“‘Or speak well of’! That’s quite good.”
“My manager is my family,” said Bud, in an affecting aside. Zuk was touched and laid a hand upon his hapless client’s.
“All rightie then,” said Dr. K. “We have family here that you do speak well of.” When the physician pulled up a chair, his demeanor changed entirely. “I want to speak to you now of what occurred. And why you’ve been having the recent problems you spoke of during intake.”
“We’ve already talked?”
“Oh yes — and not to worry. It’s quite common not to remember too much so soon after the onset.”
“Onset?”
“You had what we call a tonic-clonic seizure.”
“Tonic-clonic?” said Zuk, bemused.
“Thank you, sir, may I have another?” joked Bud, in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“Not on my watch,” said Dr. K. “And I must say you were extremely articulate during the interview.” Turning to Zuk, he said, “Manager, what does this gentleman do for a living?”
“He’s an amazing writer,” said Zuk almost gravely. “A novelist.”
“Famous?”
“Don’t answer that,” said Bud.
“Yes,” said Zuk, with no trace of irony.
“I should have guessed.” Turning back to Bud, he said, “The details you gave were really quite remarkable — and very helpful. I wish all my patients had your talents.” He folded his hands together like a man of God. “The results of the MRI indicate a tumor. I of course want to do a spectroscopy — a different sort of MRI that maps brain function in the localities near the tumor.”
“Tumor,” echoed Bud.
“Yes.”
“Is it malignant?” asked Zuk timorously.
“Not at all.”
With a glimmer of optimism, the can-do manager said, “So, that’s something you’ll remove?”
“Well,” said Dr. K. “At this moment, it’s not easily resectable — but that may change. GBMs are tricky . . . this one is for sure.”
“GBM,” said Bud, in another blank echo.
“Glioblastoma Multiforme. It looks like you have what we call an Astrocytoma, Mr. Wiggins. Grade 4 — which is quite a high number. But I have a plan. How does the saying go? ‘There’s more than one way to skin a neoplasm.’” Silence fell upon the room. “I know it’s a lot to process but we’re going to run a few more tests before we reconvene.” To Zuk, he said, “Will you be here next week?”
“I have to be in Paris.”
“We were there in the spring.”
“I can definitely do Zoom.”
“Très bon,” said Dr. K.
“Done,” said Zuk, all problems now solved.
The physician returned his gaze to the patient. “Again, I know it’s a lot — and that you’ll want to consult with ChatGPT.” There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm to the presumption. “Having said that, Mr. Wiggins, are there any questions? Anything come to mind? Hmmm? Timelines for treatment or . . .” He trailed off, allowing for that movie moment when the lead asks how much time he has left. “If you need to think about it, that’s fine too. Your ‘family’ and I can get a coffee in the lounge.”
Bud sat up in a formal way.
“Doctor . . .”
“Yes?”
“Is there anything — is there anything that would have — could have triggered this gin and tonic or this whatever it is that I have? I guess what I’m try . . . what I’m trying to say is — is there anything in the literature or anything you’ve heard of, that, uhm, anecdotally links or may link this whatever-plasm to a side effect or consequence — however remote — of . . . Mounjaro?”
Bud didn’t need a chatbot to tell him that any condition with a “4” after “Stage” or “Grade” wasn’t good.
In fact, the tumor was among the most aggressive Dr. K had ever encountered. Only a few weeks later, the novelist was in hospice with visible swelling at the front of his skull due to pressure exerted by the growth. (Lisbeth knitted him a cosmetic beret and DHL’d it from Paris.) Auspiciously, Zuk was in LA to close a deal on a Netflix series based on David Szalay’s Flesh, with Ben Stiller to direct.
The manager was caught off guard by the unfathomed depths of compassion he plumbed for the star-crossed man he’d been unable to do much for in life — and resolved to do his utmost for in these last days. He moved Bud into a high-ceilinged, sun-drenched guest room of the very place where the novelist had his first, seminal scan.
On a rare, clearheaded afternoon, the client asked Zuk if he happened to know Dua Lipa.
“I’ve been thinking that a writer with my kind of . . . issues might be a good fit for her book club. She has an insanely popular podcast, you know. Those Albanians know how to move product, if you gather my meaning. It’s on YouTube — you should watch!”
Zuk thought the idea wasn’t so much delusional as far-fetched. Plus, he didn’t know Dua . . . but did know Katy Perry. AI Claude told one of his assistants that Katy and Dua had a close, almost sisterly relationship. As a fifteen year-old, she worshipped Katy, who went on to become her biggest cheerleader when Dua teleported onto the world stage. Zuk decided to reach out — what harm could come?
Katy was in Greece. When he told her about the situation — and made the Dua proposition — she was moved to tears. During the call, she emailed Cutie (her nickname for Dua) a heads-up, copying Zuk by way of introduction. That night, he carefully crafted a letter to Dua recapping the whole story, attaching some old, praiseworthy reviews of Bud’s books. Her warm response came in the morning but was cryptic because she didn’t say anything about the podcast request. “Katy thinks the world of you,” wrote Dua. “Which now means I do too! Let me take you for a cuppa next time you’re in Londontown.”
Two days later, serendipitously in the UK for yet another showbiz emergency, they met. (As it happened, she’d written a number of songs for the streaming version of All Fours, but the fire Zuk was putting out had nothing to do with the Miranda July project.) The singer-songwriter was unguarded and beyond sweet but grew sad-faced when voicing her hesitation about Bud appearing on the show. “I’m actually not sure it would work — bit on the fence about that.” (Zuk’s translation: Not gonna happen.) “But I’m immensely flattered you thought of me.” He was disappointed yet understood.
Sidetracking to the Starz project, she said, “I had dinner with Miranda and Florence Welch just last week — three witches at a cauldron! Oh, you’d have loved to be a fly on that kettle . . . adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting! A night to remember! Miranda was on the Book Club, you know — Service95.”
“Why do you call it that?”
“I was born in ’95 — and am ever in service to my fans.”
“That’s lovely.”
“I’ve been a bonkers fan of Miranda for ages.” Slyly, she added, “George Saunders was a guest too.”
“Yes, I know!” he said brightly. “Your show’s so great. And so important.”
“Thank you!”
“It’s fantastic how you introduce your demographic to serious writers — such a gift. And you’re an amazing interviewer.”
“Well, it’s been great fun, and I’ve really learned so much. Alas, the fun and the learning carry on.”
“Bud actually saw your interview with George around the time he got diagnosed — ”
“Really?”
“ — before he got so terribly sick. In fact, I wish I could take credit but it was Bud’s idea to do your show!”
“Oh!”
“He’s older than I am but a huge fan of your music. And of course a fan of George as well.”
“Aren’t we all! Well. George and Paula — his wife, who’s lovely — have become great friends. I called George about Bud, you know.”
“Oh my God.”
She was cannily saving the best for the last. “When I told him about what was going on with your friend, he got very quiet, in his George-like way. And . . .” Fluttering her eyes, she said, “Hang on to your Cheshire Cat.” She opened them wide. “As it turns out, George is a great fan of Bud Wiggins Senior — ”
“You’re kidding.”
“ — and is genned up on the works of Bud Junior as well.”
“That is crazy! Dua, that’s amazing!”
“Hang on to Cheshire Cat Number Two. George said that he actually prefers Junior’s work to his papa’s . . .”
“Unbelievable. Bud is going to be so happy to hear that.”
“Anyway . . . he’s going be in LA quite soon, doing events for Vigil — ”
“I hear Vigil is amazing.”
“ — it is, though George does feel a bit clobbered by certain snarky reviews that shall remain nameless — but he suggested popping in on Bud for a visit. Is that something he’s in well enough shape to do? Do you think he’d be up for it? How far has the tumor progressed?”
By hospice time, Caddy had sampled some of Bud’s books.
The one she ordered from a third-party seller on Amazon never arrived but she read pirated excerpts of his work on the web. Though it wasn’t really her thing (she was in the middle of Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend and loving it), Caddy was convinced the novelist’s brief, dramatic entrance into her life was an important spoke of her karmic wheel. In some ways, Bud evoked a far less toxic version of her estranged father, with the added bonus of being an elder of a tribe that her soul longed to call its own: the sacred clan of writers. For all her quibbling — she cattily told her mother, “He’s good but he’s minor” — she knew Bud Wiggins Jr. had suffered for his art and been lionhearted. With audacious, reckless transparency, he’d etched the chimerical dreams and embarrassing agonies of his life on the stained glass pages of his novels, each a grimoire of what it meant to be that holy, pornographic thing: human. That was a writer worthy of the tribe.
A few days after Bud collapsed, she listened to a cuspy centennial novelist on Bret Easton Ellis’ podcast. Some kind of chord was struck when the guest shared that when she was very young, her mother was an end-of-life doula who cared for nuns at a monastery near the Getty. After a pep talk from her mom (who knew all about her daughter’s chaste tango with the fading “minor artist”) she phoned Zuk Taittinger.
“Hi — this is Caddy Wool, the girl who was with Bud when he fainted at the bookstore.”
It took a moment for things to jog. “Hi Caddy!” he said convivially. “I remember when we spoke . . . How are you?”
“Fine. How’s Bud?”
“Could be better.”
“The reason I’m getting in touch — and if it’s not okay, that’s totally fine — but if it’s at all possible, I’d really like to come see him.”
“You know what . . .” Her heart sank at the long pause. But instead of “Now is probably not the time,” Zuk said, “That would be great, that would be amazing, and thank you. What a lovely thing to want to do! I’m crying, Caddy, I really am! He’s staying with us at the house. Can you come up?”
“Yes! Of course.”
“Fantastic, I’ll put Emilia on and make a time.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re a good person, Caddy — I cannot tell you what that will do for his spirits. Not too many people have visited. They just haven’t, for whatever reason.”
Instead of using Lyft, she took her first driverless ride. It seemed appropriate no one was at the wheel. As eerie as that felt, there was something lushly theatrical about it, and fated too. (She thought of the Warren Zevon record her dad listened to night and day, “My Ride’s Here.”) In the passenger seat but utterly alone, winding through destiny’s hills, a profanely lyrical, elegiac meditation was born — Charon’s Waymo, the haunting title story of the eponymous collection that won her the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award six years later.7
With dreamlike suddenness, she stood in front of the hospital bed staring at Bud, who looked gone. Through the panoramic window, someone cleaned the tropey Hockney-blue pool while gardeners busied with their work. She knew a housekeeper had led her to the novelist’s room but remembered nothing else.
A caregiver with a warm smile rose from his chair.
“I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me — it’s my lunch time. Just give a shout if there’s anything you need. And it’s fine to wake him up! The man sleeps more than ten cats.” He looked back at his charge from the door and wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think he’s asleep at all. Just pretending.” Before leaving, he asked, “Are you an author as well?”
“Not yet,” she said wistfully.
She moved close to the window to look at the vista. The workers had left and Caddy felt like a trespasser. Overcoming her nerves, she stepped close to him, pinning down the enigma of her emotions like a champion wrestler. She grabbed a tissue and daubed a tear drop that fell from one of Bud’s eyes — was it because of the swelling? A macabrely comical beret cocked up on his crown like a sidewalk warped by a tree root.
The nauseating thing inside his head was trying to break out.
She shut her eyes and pictured herself as a girl, opening books from her parents’ shelves to inhale their scent before splaying the pages against her bare, flat bosom. The sense memory returned — the mysteries and pregenitality of it — yet here, in the fading pages of the tribesman’s household ICU, the only smells were the vicarious ones of the nunnery. A dying sister had given Mom a piece of paper with a quote that she occasionally recited to her daughter (“Instead of perfume there will be rottenness; instead of a belt, a rope; instead of well-set hair, baldness; instead of a rich robe, a skirt of sackcloth; and branding, instead of beauty”), acting out the words in vulgar burlesque or stoic earnestness or Shakespearean caricature, depending on the effect of the wine she took like a sacrament to purge herself of the bacterized hospice death funk. But no matter how Caddy’s mother stylized them, the sentences were always freaked by sorrow.
She saw his eyes open, roaming here and there in neutral curiosity.
“Hi, Bud! It’s Caddy.” She paused. “I wanted to come see you — Zuk said it would be all right to come see you.” When he smiled at her, Caddy’s heart and mouth broke open. “Well, hi there! Hi! How ya doin’, Mr. Cannoli? It’s me, Miss Gun.”
A mischief maker, he blinked like Harpo Marx. “Miss Gun?” he clowned. “Either take the Fifth — or say hello to my little friend!”
“Tony Montana! I just saw that at the New Beverly!”
His smile quick-changed to a bewildered grimace. “Are you here?”
There was fear in the look, and something else that she called sorrow.
“Yes,” she soothed, touching his arm. “I am here.”
The answer calmed him. “You were here earlier, for lunch,” he said offhandedly. “You’re back? Are you here now?”
The riddle hung in the air as she choked on the world.
On the afternoon George Saunders was due, in another movie moment, Dr. K told Zuk “Our friend could go any time now.” The manager was in denial. “But I just spoke to him,” he exclaimed, beaming like a loon. “He was so with it — a hundred per cent! Like the old Bud! The legend . . .”
The dying writer insisted that Rosa dress him in his trademark jumpsuit for Saunders’ visit. “And fragrance,” he jubilantly commanded. “We must have fragrance! Fragrance must be worn in honor of our esteemed guest.”
Zuk’s assistant picked up a bottle of Rose Tonnerre and Bud stretched out like a dog for a belly rub while the giggly housekeeper went to town. Giggling himself, Zuk finally shouted, “Enough shpritzing, Rosa, enough!” and confiscated it. He knew the perfume carwash would be comedy gold for his eulogy.
A few days before, Bud happily agreed to Zuk’s brainstorm that a camera crew attend “the Saunders Summit,” something he had already cleared with George. Documenting the event was important for posterity — and a definite asset in negotiating the sale of his client’s literary archives. An author need not be a superstar to get something in the low six figures; it wouldn’t make the nightly news but every dollar helped. Medical bills had mounted, with significant portions not fully covered by the WGA health plan. (Whenever the manager suggested crowdfunding, Bud shot it down.) Finally, Zuk’s wife gently cautioned, “Darling, you’ve been incredibly supportive and generous — you’ve been heroic. But there’s a limit.”
Of course he knew she was right.
Dr. K was thrilled to be making his film debut as “Mr. Wiggins’ personal physician, not his costar,” he joked. In all seriousness he added, “I do have a SAG card, by the way.” But as it turned out, Saunders caught a bad flu and his West Coast trip was postponed; Bud Wiggins Jr. died a few weeks before the Booker winner’s rescheduled event.
At the moment he passed, Zuk was dealing with more hijinks on the set of All Fours and the caregiver was on a smoke break. But the housekeeper, who’d grown immensely fond of her employer’s guest, was with him during his last breath — a blessing. She hadn’t wept so hard since her beautiful boy revved his motorcycle out of the world.
There was no memorial.
Not long after the funeral, Caddy visited his grave at a small Westwood cemetery. His manager paid for the interment; many of Zuk’s famous clients and associates were buried there.
On the ground in front of the bottom drawer, she sat cross-legged and smoked, like a truant schoolgirl. After a while, she strolled through the park with a map from the mortuary office, hunting celebrated writers. He wasn’t too far from Truman Capote — she thought Bud would be pleased. Ray Bradbury was a short hike away, as was Rod McKuen, a poet she’d never heard of. After snooping on her gammy’s favorites, Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins, she ran out of steam. Jackie’s epitaph was SHE GAVE A GREAT DEAL OF PEOPLE A GREAT DEAL OF PLEASURE. She laughed, wondering what dark variation Bud would have come up with for his own stone.
On the way home, Caddy stopped at Stories. As a tribute, she sat in the same alcove where Bud was felled by the tumor.
At the party where they first met, he had spoken of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s posthumously published The Pat Hobby Stories — the book that inspired Bud Wiggins Senior, who “saw himself on every page,” to begin his own journey as a writer. Bud told her that the autobiographical tales of woe about a washed-up, alcoholic movie hack were sold to magazines to pay his daughter’s college tuition “and keep Zelda in the nuthouse. By then, at just 44 years-old, poor F. Scott had been effectively deleted from public and critical memory. You know, those Pat Hobby stories are hack jobs themselves . . .” He crinkled wet eyes. “But so mordant and transcendently sad — the horror of being upright just blows right through them like a slapstick Santa Ana yowl. But oh, the spirit . . . the spirit remains! You must read them someday. Will you promise? I command it.”
Leaving her scarf as a seat marker, Caddy went in search of a book to bring back to the table. On tiptoes, she pulled down an omnibus of Fitzgerald stories. None of them featured the broken-down Pat Hobby.
An adjacent shelf was bedecked by oversized Post-it prayer flags — STAFF PICKS — each written in different-colored calligraphic pen. Her eyes landed on a book with a blood-red cover and two side-by-side flaps taped beneath.
This beautifully illustrated new ed. of Faulkner’s audacious gangsta dream novel THE SOUND & THE FURY is notable for the SMASH ‘N’ GRAB intro by underrated niche novelist Bud Wiggins Jr (recently deceased), who, AS HE LAY DYING (literally) let it R.I.P. - i.e. carved the mad-overrated gothic bugger a serious new one. The intro went viral because it was slipped in by a guerrilla typesetter & was about to be pulped by the pub before Houellebecq substack-rhapsodized on Outlaw Wiggins Junior & web-fire spread faster than a Karen Bass INFERNORAMA - moving a S-ton of productivo. What a twist! Unlike FURY (that hoary, turgid “splendid failure” — ol’ alkie Bill’s phrase hisself, btw — beloved by Boomer Faulksingers and Zoomer phonies alike), you’ll breeze through Wiggins’ profane takedown and LOSE YOUR WIG-gins as you watch him take a scary transgressive dump on Mr. Bill’s corpse whilst dragging it thru the polite streets of Amerikan Sacred Cow Lit. The man (WIGGINS) is LEGEND. As Nabokov said, ‘Down with Faulkner!’ — & as I say, Kill the Booker Buddhas! Kill twee writer workshops! Reissue the books of Professor Wiggins Junior! The KING is DEAD, LONG LIVE THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING - BWJ!!!!!
She sent a photo of it to Zuk, who wrote back “LOL!” One of his assistants posted the image on his company’s Instagram.
The trolling foreword that became known as The Sound and the Fury: The Wiggins Edition burned its way into the vernacular. “They got majorly Wigginsed,” “Don’t Wiggins me!”, et al were ubiquitous; punk monographs and subversive critical essays proliferated with titles like “Did Bud Wiggins Jr. Say the Quiet Part Out Loud?” and “Things We Talk About When We Talk About Faulkner (and Bud Wiggins Jr.).”
The last time Zuk checked BookScan, Year To Date Sales were 376,478 — and because of Houellebecq, Zuk was able to get Bud’s back catalogue published by Gallimard .
The manager was starting to think biopic.
Years went by before she spoke to Zuk again.
When Charon’s Waymo won the Flannery O’Connor, he sent a congratulatory email and suggested a lunch — “What about adapting something from CW for Netflix? They did G. Saunders Spiderhead and Margot Robbie’s company LuckyChap is developing tons of Ottessa stories” — but nothing came of it.
Whether strictly deserving, “minor talent” Bud Wiggins Jr. became a major part of Caddy’s literary coming of age story. On podcasts, she poignantly reminisced about the odd couple’s brief season, an affaire de coeur she called “The Old Man and the She.” Caddy lived in Brooklyn now but returned in the middle of spring for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. She was the star attraction of a short story panel.
A rainy day — her favorite kind. He was buried just a mile away from the event, so after the Q&A and book signing, she spontaneously walked over. Approaching his grave, she noticed a camera crew heading in the same direction. One of them held an umbrella over a balding man in a blazer — it was Zuk. He made a beeline when he saw her.
“Oh my God, Caddy!”
“Hi Zuk! What’s going on?”
He gestured to his entourage. “They’re from La Grand Librairie — a hugely popular show in France that’s all about writers. They’re doing a short piece on Bud!”
“C’est fantastique.”
He shouted to the crew, “Voici Caddy Wool, une écrivaine extraordinaire qui a remporté de nombreux prix. You need to do a show about her!” Turning back, he said, “You have to do it, the French will love you. They will absolutely fly you over!”
“I’m so sorry I didn’t return your email, that was just rude. It was so sweet of you to think of me . . .”
“Listen: I have an amazing idea — do you want to do this with me?”
“What do you mean?”
“The interview! Come talk with me about Bud on camera — ”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Zuk.”
“Why not? It would really sell the segment. And it’s so interesting that we ran into each other, don’t you think? I mean, here? Now? Bud must have arranged it! It would add so much . . .”
“I’m sorry, I just can’t,” she said ruefully. “I have to say no.”
“No worries! How long are you in town?”
“I’m actually leaving tomorrow.”
“Next time then. And I am so happy for all the success you’ve had.”
As the rain abated, the crew was already on their way toward the columbarium to prep the shot. Zuk was going to talk about George Saunders being a great fan of his former client and how Bud was too sick to appear on Service95, which broke Dua’s heart. He would end with his crowd-pleaser — the time Rosa hosed down the moribund writer with Rose Tonnerre.
Zuk called out as she left. “Did you see the grave?”
“Not since right after the memorial.”
“Then you haven’t seen it — ”
She nodded toward the Parisiennes. “I’ll come back when it’s not so crowded!”
Zuk went into headmaster mode.
Racing over to grab the hand of his rebellious student, he began power-walking to the crypt. “They are not going to film you, I promise. But you have to see it, Caddy. You’re the one who gave me the idea!”
“What idea?”
“We didn’t have an epitaph and it was driving me crazy. Because it had to be brilliant. Brilliant and witty and dark — it had to be worthy. Lisbeth finally said, ‘Why don’t you just put on there what you always called him? “Legend.”’ And I thought, That’s it! I ordered the stone. But the night before it was ready, I had a dream. I’m telling you, Caddy, I actually had a dream! I dreamt I was at that bookstore, showing Bud the Faulkner book that he wrote the amazing introduction for. Remember the photo you sent me? With a review from someone who worked there? When I woke up from the dream, I knew. So I had them redo the inscription . . .”
As they arrived, the crew ignored them.
Zuk crouched down to show her the plaque:
BUD WIGGINS
1964 - 2026
“Staff Pick”
Bruce Wagner has written fourteen novels, including the famous “Cellphone Trilogy,” — I’m Losing You (PEN USA finalist), I’ll Let You Go, and Still Holding — and the PEN/Faulkner-finalist Chrysanthemum Palace. His more recent titles include Amputation, ROAR: American Master and The Met Gala & Tales of Saints and Seekers. He wrote the screenplay for David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, for which Julianne Moore won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. He lives in Los Angeles.
This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life (DFW) and Congratulations, By the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness (Saunders ). The NYT said of the latter, “As slender as a psalm, and as heavy.”
He couldn’t really blame that Saunders gilded the lily of an outsized, overdue fame. But would Roth, DeLillo or Cormac have done the same? It was probably just a generational thing. Though wasn’t GS pushing seventy?
Often, his freak talents made the job of reading an entire book unnecessary. As an example, young Bud inhabited one of the longer tales in The Arabian Nights (Richard Burton, trans.) for something close to five months. His immersion was so pervasive that the story justly became a compleat microcosm of the 4,000-page work.
The actress Sarah Jessica Parker was on the jury when Flesh won the Booker. Bud fantasized about being nominated and learning to his delight that he knew two or three of the sitting judges personally. But sometimes connections like that backfired.
In hardcover, respectively: 253,871, 152,491, 215,443.
194,206 copies, hardcover.
41,813 hardcover
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This is excellent. Brutal, funny, and unexpectedly moving.
I'm glad he had some flashes at the end, all else notwithstanding. Peeling of a stumbling sesquipedalian sausage. I don't regret witnessing it in the least.